Farming and parks are not mutually exclusive

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At long last a city-based journo, Paul Sheehan ("It's a whole
new way of seeing green", Herald, August 8), has gone out to
the bush and spoken to someone who has survived the drought without
complaint or government handout. If Paul cared to spend more time
in the "void", he would find George King is not so radical and that
Allan Savory's ideas of holistic management are being embraced by
thousands of other successful farmers.

Dimity McMurtrie Bingara

We purchased a 120-hectare former dairy farm in the Gold Coast
hinterland in December 2000. The elderly owners had opened all the
gates and let their 50 or so cows wander. The result was a rough
and weed-infested block.

Using holistic management, the front 80 hectares of this
property comfortably carried 155 cows, five bulls, 114 calves and
14 horses through one of the driest periods in the past 100 years.
The grasses are healthier, the soil holds more of the rain that
falls on it and what were weeds are now cattle feed. We have a pair
of wedge-tailed eagles nesting on the property, many different
parrots, cockatoos and lizards, and last evening there was a group
of more than a dozen wallabies feeding on the hillside.

This is in an area 15 minutes from the Gold Coast high rises and
surrounded by two- and four-hectare blocks.

Tony Lovell Tallebudgera Valley (Qld)

I'm sick of hearing national parks being bagged. National parks
are arguably some of the favourite places of Australians and
certainly international visitors. Without them, the threatened
superb parrot at George King's property, Coombing Park, may not
exist - it is more likely it came from a national park than
degraded bushland. Wildlife will move across the landscape to do
what they are born to do if there is suitable habitat.

There is precious little native vegetation left west of the Blue
Mountains, indicating that biodiversity conservation cannot be left
entirely to individual landowners. The solution to degraded land is
most often under foot - in the seedbank in the soil. The bush is
amazingly resilient and with skilful management will regenerate
without planting.

Jane Gye Warrawee

Paul Sheehan confuses cell grazing on the property Coombing
Park, which I agree is sound grazing management, with African
big-game predator-prey relationships. Australia does not have large
migrating herds of hard-footed herbivores and associated predators.
Our soils are too poor and the rainfall too low and spasmodic to
support such biomasses of flesh.

With Sheehan also quoting a landholder's criticism of national
parks, it appears there is a parks-bashing theme in the
Herald's opinion pages. Rebuttals of this are noticeably
absent.

The best-condition native vegetation I have seen is in our
precious conservation reserves, covering a mere 8 per cent of the
state. Even during drought, most of the soil in reserves is
protected by vegetation because these areas are not continuously
grazed or trampled by hard-footed, introduced, domestic
herbivores.

John Benson Balmain

For the past few years of below-average rainfall we have elected
to manage our land holistically, in the same vein as George King.
We sold down our animal numbers to maintain our ground cover.

We believe we have protected our landscape, and, in so far as we
can influence it, we have attempted to maintain a healthy water,
mineral and energy cycle.

The proceeds of the sale of our animals were directed in part to
deposits on investment properties, which are providing us with an
increasing income stream unrelated to our land resource or the
weather. Ironically, those investment properties have caused us to
be ineligible for any of the government drought assistance
programs.

We will not sink or swim on the back of drought subsidies and it
is for us a minor issue. We do, however, believe that it sends the
wrong message to farmers: keep all your animals and feed them
subsidised fodder while denuding the landscape and perpetuating
many of the practices that have caused this drought to hit so many
so hard - and do it all again next time.

Stewart Osborne Koorawatha

Money, banks, interest rate subsidies. While the Government
attempts only to shower farmers with money during drought, it is a
relief to read about a process of land management that regenerates
the whole. Has John Howard got a copy of Allan Savory's book?

Kate Gardiner Waverton

Little rays of sunshine brighten the argument

Colin Keay (Letters, August 9), if we need 1200 square
kilometres of solar panels to supply electricity for Sydney, when
can we start building? I know a good place for them, too - it's
quite literally the back of Bourke.

I'd be interested to know how much it would cost in comparison
to a new power station that we wouldn't need. There is also the
added benefit of only needing coal-fired power at night, when
demand is less.

Why haven't we built the world's largest solar farm earlier? We
certainly have enough useless land to put it on.

Roger Clark Five Dock

With regard to Colin Keay's assertion, I would like to point out
the bleeding obvious to him and, in particular, to our politicians:
if the Government put solar panels on every roof in NSW, the
generating capacity would far exceed that of the proposed new power
stations at a far lower cost, because the price of such panels
would fall due to the high volume produced.

Negative labour costs and less infrastructure would also be a
distinct advantage of this process, with a huge reduction in
greenhouse emissions.

Barry Thiele Ryde

So a mere 30 kilometres by 40 kilometres of solar panels would
meet Sydney's energy needs? Out west there are sheep farms larger
than this. What are we waiting for?

Carl Sparre Eastwood

If, having cut down the trees overshadowing my home, I then
install solar panels, to what sort of greenhouse credits would I be
entitled?

J. Barrie Brown Gordon

I hate to be pedantic, Frans Kalf (Letters, August 9), but a
basic law of physics says that no energy is "expended" but merely
redistributed - that's entropy. It's my excuse for not doing any
housework - resistance is futile.

Luke Bromilow Oxford (England)

Winners and losers in the family battleground

"Any good employer will bend over backwards to accommodate the
family needs and family circumstances of employees," says John
Howard ("PM may halt extra leave for parents", Herald,
August 9). Surely it hardly needs to be pointed out, but industrial
regulations do not exist to protect workers from "good employers" -
they exist to protect us from the shady dealers who will exploit
whatever loopholes the Government leaves open.

Chris Buckridge Highgate Hill (Qld)

The new generous family leave provisions, as granted by the
Industrial Relations Commission, will now give lesbians a
substantial employment advantage over other women.

Adriana Maxwell Jervis Bay

Is "non-breeder" the new "self-starter" in job applications?

Rob Eager Rockdale

What a great day for families and workers at the union picnic at
Olympic Park on Sunday. But did anybody choke at the $8 for a
sizzling sausage? This was hardly "family friendly".

Rowena Penniment Earlwood

Mobile phone bores

In response to Janetta Gilbert (Letters, August 9), the reason so
many of us wear iPods is to tune out the dreary, interminable,
one-sided conversations inflicted on us by mobile phone users. I
have a choice of many tunes to suit my mood. I'd rather that than
somebody boring me to death about what they thought of last night's
CSI or the latest round of rugby.

Sophie Strange Neutral Bay

Kitchen renovation

Because the Premier, Morris Iemma, may have been too busy to read
all of the Herald's compelling editorial ("A fork in the
road", August 9), one sentence will suffice to encapsulate the
conclusion that emerged from the paper's recent Campaign for
Sydney: "Planning the city and planning transport are two parts of
the same process and must be carried out in the same agency with
one person in charge."

You've cleared out the cupboards, Morris. It's time to rearrange
the contents.

Pamela Chippindall Point Piper

New life for old plays

Hey Peter Lorschy (Letters, August 9), Baz Luhrmann's Romeo +
Juliet (to say nothing of his La Bohème) shows what
freshness and excitement can be achieved with a new setting of a
tired old dramatic piece. Watching the original over and over is
like watching a video - what's new?

Michel Dignand Wagga Wagga

Seeing the light

Something good may come out of the rise of Islamic terrorism; other
groups are now embarrassed to call themselves terrorists. Already
we've seen the IRA hinting at a new era of political co-operation,
and now I see that the Mexican group Zapatista is set to rebrand
itself as a "non-violent proponent of alternative politics"
("Zapatista rebel switches hide-out for political jungle",
Herald, August 9).

It seems that the latest incarnation of terrorism is giving the
incumbent terrorists a bad name. It's a small positive, to be sure,
but we must celebrate them whenever they appear.

Raymond Miles Surry Hills

You won't be alone at the pub, Seth Richardson (Letters, August
8). After the London bombings on July 7, my only way home was a
ferry along the Thames.

I wasn't too surprised to see that every pub and beer garden we
passed was very well patronised.

Nik Bencsik London

Rampant ideology

What sort of business expertise is at work with the proposed sale
of the rest of Telstra? Someone surely must ask why would anyone
want to take a valuable business asset, which is earning a good
investment return while servicing the people of Australia, sell it,
then use a large proportion of the purchase price to set up a fund
to ensure, or try to ensure, that the new owners will honour their
obligations and continue to serve the people of Australia. Isn't
this ideology gone mad?

L.A. Orton Yarrahpinni

Senate setback

It is with great apprehension with respect to the transparency of
government processes that we read of the Howard Government's plans
to curb the wide-ranging powers of estimates committees ("Coalition
plans to curb committees' powers", Herald, August 8).
Without the persistence of Senator John Faulkner and his estimates
committee, the unsuspecting public may well have believed that a
Certain Maritime Incident was nothing more than the Sydney to
Hobart yacht race.

Yola and Stephan Center Wollstonecraft

Breast cancer dilemma

I am 43 and my 44-year-old sister died three months ago from breast
cancer.

Women under 50 have to pay for these tests, and the gap between
the tests and Medicare is about $165. For the over 50s the tests
are free. Surely women like me, with close family ties to breast
cancer, or young women with a lump should be able to have the tests
free under Medicare.

Deborah Canias Marrickville

Miles of smiles

Elizabeth Barton (Letters, August 9) asks whether there were any
other Sydney eccentrics. The queen of them all was probably the
late Bea Miles, who would recite Shakespeare for sixpence, have a
bet on how many taxis you would see between North Sydney and
Wynyard, and was reputed to have taken a taxi to Perth and return
to collect wildflowers.

H. Hirschhorn Ballina

What happened to the smiling policeman? I think his name was
Geoff Little? And the red bikini girl?

Ray Smith Blacktown

Pratt's denial

I must take serious issue with the article which contains
outrageous claims against CARE Australia and by extension, myself
("Aid agency sued over Serbian trauma", Herald, August 3).
One of the claims states, in relation to Peter Wallace and me being
arrested in Yugoslavia, that "they were captured inside a war zone
carrying confidential situation reports detailing troop movements
and battlefields". I categorically deny this claim, which was a
fabrication used by the Milosevic regime to justify imprisoning my
colleagues and me. I remind you that the subsequent "trial" was
discredited internationally.

The fact that the regime sought large ransoms, for example in
one negotiation $66 million, demonstrates "how seriously" the
regime viewed the allegations and what a mockery the so-called
trial was.

Steve Pratt Canberra

Different sort of game when toddlers play

Steven Maher (Letters, August 9), you haven't really played

I Spy until you have played with a pre-reading nearly
four-year-old. My daughter kept my husband and I guessing for the
better part of a journey from Byron Bay to Port Macquarie with
"something beginning with w". After guessing water, windmill and
numerous other w-words we gave up, only to be told - woad.

Alisoun Garrard Roseville

Did I say that?

I never thought I would see the day. Memories of my father's
derision of '60s pop stars came flooding back when I saw recent
television footage of the Japanese Prime Minister and mentioned to
my children: "That Japanese PM could do with a haircut."

David Corry Como West

Sum of his parts

When Michael Foot, British Labour politician, took charge of the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the headline ran: "Foot heads
arms body."

Mark Bryant Artarmon

A clever headline followed the death of mining magnate Lang
Hancock in relation to his daughter, Gina. It read: "Gina hopes to
get her share of old Lang's iron."

Peter Wenderoth Haberfield

A mystery blonde

Harry M.Miller arrives at Lawsie's birthday celebrations with an
"unnamed female friend" ("Hello, who's that? The call of Laws unto
himself", Herald, August 9). I think she should look for a
new agent to help raise her profile.

Allan Gibson Cherrybrook

Lengthy mistake

Poor Christopher Mulligan (Letters, August 8). Those wicked
postmodernists in charge of his education require, inter alia, that
he "churn out pages of quasi-esoteric prolix". And they haven't
even bothered to teach him that "prolix" is an adjective.

Alastair McKean Yarraville (Vic)

Longer to wet and wash

Thirty-second showers! It takes that long for the hot water to come
through in our retirement village. Then another 30 to wash the
torso. A whole minute to reach the toes and even longer to
straighten up.

E.D. Smith Nowra

Should skip it

Is there any sillier event in athletics than the hop, step and
jump?

Henry Brender Bellevue Hill

Vowel play

Browsing in a Macarthur Square bookshop on Saturday I noticed one
section was labelled "Litrature".

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